


The uncanny valley.

by punkypeggy



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 21:56:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1444306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkypeggy/pseuds/punkypeggy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's musings about his childhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The uncanny valley.

_My life has been extraordinary_  
 _Blessed and cursed and won_  
 _Time heals but I’m forever broken_  
  
  
***  
  
  
They’ve always found me repulsive.  
  
I could stay completely immobile for hours, quiet for days. They never knew what I was thinking, or what I was feeling. I never cared enough to communicate it, and there was never someone out there whom I would like enough to communicate with, except for Mycroft on occasion. _“There is something wrong with the little one”_ , Nanny Anne would often say. Yet, any attempts to know what was  _wrong with the little one_  were never made, as there was always something more important, or more urgent, or more pressing. Even so, I really didn’t care. Being left to my own devices was exactly what I wanted: it kept me from any unwanted socialisation and it gave me more time for my personal investigations.  
  
I still remember Nanny Anne’s eyes, though – bloodshot and surrounded by dark circles, since she had been kept awake until late, possibly by a man, the scent of sex lingering on her skin. She would stare at me as I focused on a single speck of dust on the window for hours, my fingers together pressed against my lips, my legs bent, knees almost touching my chin. I had learnt to make myself almost invisible, still as a statue and quiet as a mouse – what a bad choice of words, mice were rarely quiet, and I knew because I often  _recruited_ them for my experiments. I remember she would jump a bit when I moved as if it were unnatural. As if she were expecting me to be dead – _"So pale, so frail, cold as a corpse"_.  
  
I would speak like an adult since I was two, I would write and read properly when I reached three, I would play the violin as a master when I was four. In Anne’s little mind, it was not alright. I believe I was a victim of what they call the “uncanny valley”: I resembled a person to the point in which she would  _believe_  me to be one, yet my features were humanlike but not  _enough_. I rarely showed any empathy, reciprocity, or interest in the mundane or in others. For her, I was something artificial resembling humanity, therefore she would distrust me because I was fundamentally inhuman. I would remind her of a zombie when I moved –not a child–, I would remind her of a corpse when I was still, wandering alone on the halls of the fortress of my mind.   
  
She feared me. I don’t blame her. I was the one who told Mycroft she was sleeping with father – _it was obvious!_  – and had her fired. I was the one who diagnosed her a heart condition that later on would take her life.  
  
She hated me because she wouldn’t understand me. She feared me because I was  _beyond_  her comprehension. I’ve never been normal.  
  
I’ve always been extraordinary.

  
  
***

  
_And I knew the meaning of it all_   
_And I knew the distance to the sun_   
_And I knew the echo that is love_   
_And I knew the secrets in your spires_   
_And I knew the emptiness of youth_   
_And I knew the solitude of heart_   
_And I knew the murmurs of the soul_   
_And the world is drawn into your hands_   
_And the world is etched upon your heart_   
_And the world so hard to understand_   
_Is the world you can’t live without_   
_And I knew the silence of the world_

**Author's Note:**

> Fragments of “Muzzle”, by Smashing Pumpkins


End file.
